The biggest winners and losers of last night's Raw (March 4)

Shield reunion v. 20308485
Shield reunion v. 20308485

Last night's Raw was yet another disappointing slog. There was no way it could compare to last week, with the good news of Roman Reigns' cancer remission and Batista's shocking return, but this particular episode felt like it had no effort at all put into it from the creative team.

Hopefully, all this ends after Sunday when Fastlane is over.

Nevertheless, did anyone manage to pull off a win last night? Let's take a look:


Losers: Everyone who took part in this match

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The feud that never ends just got another iteration. There may be no one more irrelevant right now than Braun Strowman, who has been saddled with a directionless Baron Corbin and Bobby Lashley for weeks. Drew McIntyre, for his part, has lost all of the menacing aura that was so meticulously constructed for him in 2018. He's now just another face in the crowd.

Finn Balor and Kurt Angle are faces in the crowd, too. Apparently, this was a better use of the Intercontinental Champion than an open challenge that made Seth Rollins' reign last year so memorable.

Perhaps this leads to a big multi-man match for the title at WrestleMania, but it's more than a slog to sit through.


Losers: The Raw tag team division

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WWE has booked a lot of gauntlet matches recently, and after seeing how over Seth Rollins got last year and Kofi Kingston has gotten this year, it's easy to see why.

This gauntlet just didn't cut the mustard, though.

Filler from bell to bell, it featured low-rung teams that we've been conditioned for a year to not care the slightest about. Instead of getting Heavy Machinery over, it instead drew attention to how dilapidated and depleted the Raw tag team division really is at the moment.

Loser: Seth Rollins

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Sorry, but these Shield reunions have just lost all their allure by now.

Did you remember that Seth Rollins is this year's Royal Rumble winner and is currently scheduled to take on Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship at WrestleMania? If so, you have a better attention span than WWE's creative team does.

The build to the Lesnar vs. Rollins match has been atrocious, and while things should get better after Fastlane, this doesn't do anything to tell that story. For his part, Roman Reigns doesn't need a Shield reunion to get over anymore, and he could be doing something better on his own road to WrestleMania as well. His truly gripping story is already being lost in WWE's incompetent booking formula.


Loser: Sasha Banks

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Another episode, another champion who gets pinned before an upcoming title match on pay per view. It's happened to Asuka and Daniel Bryan over on SmackDown, and now the booking trope came for Sasha Banks on Raw.

Which means, of course, that there's little chance that Sasha Banks is losing on Sunday. She'll retain her title with Bayley.

The unfortunate side effect is that random losses like these devalue the champions and make matches predictable. It's happened a lot on this road to WrestleMania.

Can't this company build up challengers in any other way?

Losers: Aleister Black and Ricochet

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Well, that didn't take long. Aleister Black and Ricochet are already on the way to becoming normal faces in the crowd.

Sure, the Revival only beat them by disqualification last night, but that's entirely the problem. Why have a rematch from last week to begin with? Why not let Black and Ricochet have singles matches? Why devalue the champions to such an extent that they need to be disqualified?

It's the laziest of all lazy 50/50 booking.

Each week has been worse than the week before for the latest NXT callups, and while it's worth repeating that Black and Ricochet are teaming in this year's Dusty Tag Team Classic at Full Sail, they shouldn't be a tag team for too long, especially in Raw's awful division.

Booking like this risks the danger of fans writing the two NXT standouts off in short order. For Black in particular, whose aura needs protecting, it would be a terrible outcome.

Winner: Ronda Rousey

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Well, at least there was one good thing last night.

This storyline has dragged for the past month, and unsurprisingly, it was a heelish Ronda Rousey that again picked things back up.

After Stephanie McMahon made a reinstatement match official between Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch at Fastlane, Ronda Rousey attacked the latter after being heavily booed by the fans.

This is where Rousey always belonged. It's what made her such a persona in the UFC and unsurprisingly, it's what's given her her best work in WWE. Rousey now stands as the ultimate bad guy for the people's champion to overcome at WrestleMania.

Hopefully this build will become much more enjoyable once Fastlane is over with, now that all the pieces will finally be in place. Let's hope that the nonsensical Becky Lynch injury angle and Authority presence will finally disappear from the scene after Sunday night.

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